INDUSTRY
IU provost honored as founder of Asia Pacific Advanced Network
Michael A. McRobbie, Indiana University Bloomington interim provost and vice president for academic affairs, recently was honored at a ceremony in Singapore for his role as a founder of the Asia Pacific Advanced Network. The "Founders Award" plaque was presented during a July 20 ceremony commemorating the 10th anniversary of the high-performance broadband network, which supports the research and education community all across the Asia-Pacific region. Also recognized was Kilnam Chon of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Seoul, Korea. "APAN has turned into the major organization promoting the development of new Internet technologies to support research collaborations in all fields between the Asia Pacific and the United States and other countries," McRobbie said. "I am delighted to have played a small role in its foundation 10 years ago." 
James G. Williams, IU director of international networking, was present to accept the award plaque for McRobbie. The ceremony took place during the 22nd APAN Meeting, July 17-21, at the National University of Singapore. In 1996, during a speech to the Asia Pacific Information Infrastructure Test Bed Forum in Seoul, McRobbie and Chon first proposed the creation of an advanced high performance research and education network called APAN to support the development of science and technology in the Asia-Pacific region. This was the culmination of a series of meetings in the region among scientists and researchers that McRobbie and Chon initiated and led. APAN was formally established in 1997 and today is the leading research and education networking organization in Asia, with 35 full and associate member organizations from Japan, China, Korea, Australia and many other countries in the region. APAN was created to promote advanced research in networking technologies and to develop high-performance broadband applications in the Asia-Pacific region. The non-profit international APAN consortium also provides an advanced networking environment for the research and education communities there. After moving to IU in 1997, McRobbie conceived and led the TransPAC project to connect the scientific and research communities in the United States to their counterparts in the countries participating in APAN. This project was funded in 1998 with a five-year, $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation for which McRobbie was the principal investigator. This grant leveraged several times as much additional funding in the Asia Pacific region in support of APAN and TransPAC. One of the early participants in TransPAC was the Chinese Education and Research Network (CERNET) operated and managed by Tsinghua University, which established a relationship that led to the agreement between IU and Tsinhua University signed by McRobbie recently in Beijing.
James G. Williams, IU director of international networking, was present to accept the award plaque for McRobbie. The ceremony took place during the 22nd APAN Meeting, July 17-21, at the National University of Singapore. In 1996, during a speech to the Asia Pacific Information Infrastructure Test Bed Forum in Seoul, McRobbie and Chon first proposed the creation of an advanced high performance research and education network called APAN to support the development of science and technology in the Asia-Pacific region. This was the culmination of a series of meetings in the region among scientists and researchers that McRobbie and Chon initiated and led. APAN was formally established in 1997 and today is the leading research and education networking organization in Asia, with 35 full and associate member organizations from Japan, China, Korea, Australia and many other countries in the region. APAN was created to promote advanced research in networking technologies and to develop high-performance broadband applications in the Asia-Pacific region. The non-profit international APAN consortium also provides an advanced networking environment for the research and education communities there. After moving to IU in 1997, McRobbie conceived and led the TransPAC project to connect the scientific and research communities in the United States to their counterparts in the countries participating in APAN. This project was funded in 1998 with a five-year, $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation for which McRobbie was the principal investigator. This grant leveraged several times as much additional funding in the Asia Pacific region in support of APAN and TransPAC. One of the early participants in TransPAC was the Chinese Education and Research Network (CERNET) operated and managed by Tsinghua University, which established a relationship that led to the agreement between IU and Tsinhua University signed by McRobbie recently in Beijing.